Valve's Team Fortress 2 named as Oculus Rift's first game

Valve's Team Fortress 2 title will be the first game officially supported by the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality gaming headset Pocket-lint encountered at CES in January.

Joe Ludwig, a programmer at Valve, confirmed the news to Engadget. When the developer kit ships (there's no word when), it will come pre-packaged with the Windows version of Team Fortress 2. Oculus Rift users will be playing in the same public servers in which every other gamer is playing.

The Mac or Linux versions of Team Fortress 2 aren't supported at launch, but will be at some point, adding more servers to the madness, Ludwig noted.

In our hands-on time with the Rift at CES in January, we noted that users can move their head naturally and the screen will move in the game with nearly zero lag, helping the the brain to trick users into believing what they are seeing. Users can even peer around corners, by simply moving their heads in a peering fashion.

Oculus hasn't provided an estimated timeline for when the Rift's developer kit will begin shipping, though it should be in the next few months. At CES, the company was using a prototype unit with off-the-shelf parts, but it is planning better screens and faster processors.

Released in 2007, TF2 is a first-person shooter that allows multiplayer gaming over servers. It has been free to play since 2011.

Half-Life 2 is also planned for the gaming experience at some point. The Oculus Rift is expected to ship to Kickstarter backers sometime this year.